Demystifying Nuclear Power Blog

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When Will They Ever Learn - The Lesson from Sir John Cockcroft

By Arnie Gundersen

My week in the UK was exciting and full of surprises. I spoke to hundreds of people in London and Cumbria who are committed to a new energy future for Europe. They know that the dated model of big business centralized electricity production is ending, and they see a clean, disaster free viable alternative in locally distributed generation. Still, it seems that the established British utilities are so fixated on nuclear power that they just offered to charge their customers twice the current market price for electricity for the next 35-years, so that a French nuclear company could build a fancy and untried new nuclear design at Hinkley Point. The United Kingdom is anything but united when it comes to how it will produce electricity in the 21st century!

Britain has experienced the dangers of nuclear power first hand as the site of the world’s first major nuclear disaster at Windscale, receiving huge amounts of contamination from Chernobyl fallout in Wales, and contaminating the Irish Sea with Plutonium at its waste reprocessing plant at Sellafield. With that background, I understand why the citizens of the UK embrace a nuclear free future. When I spoke at the House of Commons, it was clear that only a minority of the MP’s (like US Representatives) could envision an energy future different than the past. Similar to the US, the financially influential electric power monopolies have convinced a majority of the MPs that there is no alternative to nuclear power. Thankfully, many people in the UK disagree and see a nuclear free future!

Surprisingly, it was in Cumbria that I saw the most poignant reminder of how dangerous nuclear power is. There in the fog and rain stood “Cockcroft’s Folly”, a ventilation stack on the old Windscale reactor. Filters on that stack, thankfully, captured most of the radiation released during the 1957 Windscale catastrophe.

When Windscale was under construction, Sir John Cockcroft, a great engineer and Nobel Prize winner, insisted that filters be added to the ventilation stack. The British nuclear establishment laughed at him, but he was unyielding and persisted in his cause until the filters were added to Windscale. Naysayers nicknamed the filters “Cockcroft’s Folly”, and no one believed they were necessary. Then came the Windscale nuclear core fire and those “unnecessary” filters saved thousands of lives. Too contaminated even now to be removed, “Cockcroft’s Folly” stands in the middle of the Sellafield nuclear reprocessing plant, part of a more than $60 Billion cleanup planned for the neighboring stretch of coastline along the contaminated the Irish Sea.

Fairewinds received hundreds of tweets praising that story, and as can be expected, some of the 20th century paradigm pro-nukes pushed back, attacking my credibility. Sir John Cockcroft must be spinning in his grave, wondering “When will they ever learn?”

After a change of location to the Skiddaw Hotel, we got our meeting and the community turn out proved cohesive on our side.

Remembering the victims of Fukushima Daiichi’s triple meltdown at an ancient church, complete with Pagan ruins… and being questioned by local police.

Let’s call this police encounter #1

It’s ok, we made it inside.

No, that tree is not being lazy or toppling over. The winds from the Irish Sea blow so hard that the landscape adopts this laid-back posture.

It seems to me that Cumbria is ideal for alternative energy – wind turbines.

This picture was taken from the church, in the distance you can see Sellafield the nuclear waste reprocessing site. The land in between is the land proposed for the AP1000 nuclear reactors.

“X” Marks the Spot

The Road to Sellafield

Welcome to Sellafield…

…or maybe not.

There is a bike path that edges the Sellafield property, we were taking a misty stroll when approached by these armed “bobbies”.

Let’s call this police encounter #2

I didn’t let the police stop my walk, and I certainly wasn’t going to let the mud stop it either.

Police + Nuclear Waste + Mud = a Pint

Make that 2 Pints!

The Pigeon House

This house was owned by 2 ladies who loved feeding the local pigeons. The neighboring B&B did not love this bird feeding frenzy and the subsequent pigeon poop that accompanied it, so they complained to local authorities. When not hanging out on the lawn between the ladies’ pink house and the B&B, these pigeons would frequent the local nuclear waste reprocessing site at Sellafield. Scientists conducted tests on these notorious’ birds fecal traces and found their poop to be highly radioactive!